A short interview clip (Service Driver Revolution series) in which Chris Collins and Chryssa Hunlock discuss how parts and service departments operate differently in truck versus car dealerships. Key claims: truck-parts departments sell heavily to external customers and often dominate dealership revenue and space decisions; service departments play a smaller, but still essential, role. Hunlock emphasizes assessing individual motivations (e.g., commission on outside parts sales), the need for close parts–service collaboration, and how small operational delays (e.g., a parts-pricing person leaving before entering a price) cascade through the dealership and customer experience.
Chapters
Coming from the car side of things and in immersing ourselves in truck and I think a lot of listeners that, that are in car will find this fascinating because I did is that the parts departments in truck dealerships do insane amounts of sales to the outside. In the service department is a pimple on the backside or on the, of the parts department. Like the parts manager swings a way bigger stick in. The service manager is like. So here's something that you'll hear in a car dealership is like a parts manager will say, well, the service department's my number one customer. You'll never hear that in a truck dealership. The parts manager is like, well, tell the service manager to make an appointment, I'm busy, like.
Or they're trying to figure out a way that they can actually get rid of the service department and just have more space.
Yeah.
For more inventory.
Because they're moving so much stuff on the outside.
Yeah, it's, it's partly true, but one thing I was going to say maybe a cleaner segue than the grandpa story, but I was going to say that relationships that we were talking about before. Yes, absolutely. You're right. They know because I, you know, whenever I come into a new role, the first assessment I'm doing is what motivates this person. You know, what are they paid by? Is this commission based? Outside part sales? They're commission based. So these are going to be the things they're looking for. But of course there's a lot more money to be had in quantity alone. If you're going to go out, beat the streets and say, I want to supply all of your brake shoes and all of your oil and all of your drums and all these know, filters and all these high turnover dollar items. But you have to have a good relationship with the service department too because they, they are going to make you quite a bit of money on top of that. Yes, it's a smaller fraction. They're maybe not your biggest customer all the time, but certainly I wouldn't want to not have enough of, you know, radiators on my shelf so that my own service shop has to go get a radiator from somewhere else. That can't happen, you know, and that's something that I'm in this role. I'm here to make sure, you know that we're, I'm partnering with them just to make sure that the OA, as the oem, we're giving them the right deals so that they're stocking the right parts so that they can supply not Only all those outside customers, but anyone that walks in the door, cash customers, as well as, you know, the service department, and that's something I really respect about the dealership I'm working with now, is they come right out and say, we believe in sitting down with the service department. You know, we. We need to work in tandem. And that can't be overlooked. And there is so much overlap there that, you know, I mean, I say it in the trucking industry, I'm not really sure, and I haven't read any studies or done my own research, but I'm not really sure. Every industry is as tied to each and every component as the trucking industry. Each and every component. You know, if my parts pricing person who sits in some office, you know, in the middle of the country out here for Daimler, for the OEM, if they clock out at 5pm and they had one more part that they needed to price, which means just, you know, their computer method of putting the price in the system. If they clock out before doing that last one and go home, I'll get that tomorrow. Well, that means that the dealership can't sell that part because it's not priced yet. And if there's a customer that needs it tonight, sorry, you have to wait till tomorrow. We'll get the pricing in, and then you have to wait another couple days for the PDC to deliver it, then another couple days for the shop to get it to do the repair. And so, I mean, it just, it truly is. Every single person that's involved in this industry is holding the piece of string. You know, it's like the string on the sweater. The old Weezer song. That's always the image I get.
Would you sing that song for us really quick?
No, no.
I have the voice of an angel. Come on.
I told you I went to college for music. But I won't. But, yeah, you know, it's. It's. If you don't think that you're having an impact on pulling that thread on the sweater and you're involved in this industry, you're wrong. You're just not looking at the bigger picture. You're not understanding how you fit in this ecosystem.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR for special deals on our books and training. Head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
